Anno 117's Pax Romana's Top Secret Is a Impressive First-Person View.
Wait — did you know gamers have the option to enjoy Anno 117: Pax Romana in first-person? If you're thinking that, your surprise matches as my own reaction when I discovered this concealed mode. Allow me to step away from my empire’s management, entrust it to a trusted assistant, borrow a cart, and enjoy a ride across the Roman world.
Activating the First-Person View
As a city-building game, Anno 117: Pax Romana usually operates from a bird's-eye view. Yet, when you input a hidden code — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls or else “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — you gain the ability to walk the realm as a regular inhabitant. Because an analogous secret was included in the previous Anno title, I was eager to test it in the new release, but I wasn’t sure it would function before I discovered myself submerged in a structural glitch (which probably wasn’t intended — this feature can be prone to glitches now and then).
Discovering the Streets of Rome
After extracting myself, I walked the bustling streets of my city and explored stalls, alehouses, flower fields, and seafood collectors — it was glorious to observe all my hard work through a fresh lens. I detected numerous fine points I wouldn’t have spotted from the top-down view: Doorway embellishments, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, fowl roaming freely, people relaxing on their verandas… Merely examining the shape of a window sill and the coating on a pillar becomes engaging to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
Further Than Mere Wandering
But there’s more to the first-person feature in Anno 117 than strolling along the road. I was especially delighted the moment I learned that I could not just observe crop lands, but also step into them. And although I’d assumed interiors would be restricted, I was able to enter mud extraction sites, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building as teaching was underway, and invade personal courtyards. Don’t try to open any doors (not even the creators allocated resources for that), however, you can definitely meander across a cereal plantation, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and glance into any tiny hut provided the entrance is missing.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Even though I expected to observe my settlement depicted using primitive rendering, besides some crude animations and periodic inhabitants sitting inside seating instead of on a bench, the first-person view appears considerably improved over predictions. The intricately designed surfaces (notably masonry elements) shouldn't logically be this impressive for a title that remains primarily overhead. You won't necessarily notice any individual strands of hair, but you will see wall inscriptions, sparks flying from torches, discoloration of masonry, iris elements, and pine tree leaves. Evening, with glowing light sources and distant stellar illumination, creates a particularly moody setting, and feels much less frightening relative to the previous game, given that the populace appears unlike nightmarish entities anymore.
Experimentation and Customization
Since Anno 117’s super-secret first-person mode doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I opted to try different commands, and immediately located the functions for jumping, dashing, and adjusting the view — the zoom function permitting me to switch between first and third-person views and revert. I then decided to hit various digit inputs and learned I could modify my avatar's look. Amber garment? Red toga? Blue and purple toga? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; when you press the action key, you’ll fire burning arrows into the sky. If you're interested, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I attempted, naturally).
Humor and Citizen Interactions
However, I had no desire to injure my people, because they’re way too funny. Moments after I entered the immersive perspective, I heard a parent advising their offspring that he “Can’t have a pet fox and if you feed it one more chicken, your elder will punish you.” Understandable stance, father character. One lovely local Celt then proceeded to praise my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by describing it as “Ideal combination,” whereas an irritable elderly woman decided to threaten me: “Repeat that statement, and your disappearance will be permanent.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
Just when I thought I had found everything available in Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first-person mode, I encountered the delight of riding through classical settlements. Entirely by accident, I clicked on a wagon and was promptly seated on the box. Bovines, equines, even manually drawn vehicles; you can control each one as desired. The donkey cart, in particular, travels rather rapidly, although you shouldn't expect any GTA-like shenanigans — impacting citizens or additional vehicles cannot occur (again, not saying I’ve tried).
Combat Limitations
The sole aspect that let me down within the immersive perspective was discovering my inability to participate in any fighting. Sporting my soldier fit, I charged toward adversaries in the midst of battle and attempted to attack them, only to be ignored completely. The close-up view was still rather spectacular, and watching the enemy run, their arms flailing about, seemed enormously rewarding, yet it would have been exciting to actually hit something via my incendiary bolts.
